In the Chinese city of Ruili, Yunnan Province, facial-recognition technology has been linked to citizens’ health codes to combat the spread of the coronavirus. This is reported by France 24.
This is the first publicly registered case of using facial recognition to track movements and a person’s health status when entering and leaving residential compounds, supermarkets, transport hubs, and other public places.
“Anyone entering or leaving must have their health code and face scanned,” said city officials.
According to them, the region is experiencing the largest COVID-19 outbreak in months. Last week the city reported 155 new infections.
“Security tools such as facial-recognition cameras, smart door locks, and road barriers have been deployed in key areas,” local authorities said.
Details on how long records will be stored in the database are absent. There is also no information on whether authorities plan to deactivate the system after the COVID-19 outbreak is contained.
The new health-monitoring tools have raised privacy concerns.
According to a January investigation by the New York Times, a widely used app for tracking travel history and virus tests, developed by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, shared data with the police.
During the height of the pandemic, law enforcement in major cities wore helmets equipped with facial-recognition systems and infrared cameras that measured pedestrians’ temperatures.
Human rights groups criticised China’s ubiquitous surveillance network, saying it is used to suppress dissent and persecute ethnic minorities.
Earlier in July, Tencent announced a facial-recognition feature to restrict underage gamers’ access to online games at night.
In June it was reported that the Chinese company Canon Information Technology installed AI cameras that admit only smiling people into offices.
In May, a programmer-engineer spoke about testing of an emotion-recognition system in police stations in Xinjiang.
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